Candidate did not respond to our questions.
Candidate did not respond to our questions.
Candidate did not respond to our questions.
- What do you feel is the #1 accessibility issue facing the city of London? The paratransit system is grossly inferior for Londoners in need. Robbing them of their independence and dignity.
- How will you commit to improving accessible housing opportunities in our city? Rushing to approve non-profits to be able to purchase older apartments that go up for sale. Allowing these non-profits to work with the City to secure government funding to purchase and repair these buildings and ensure they are well taken care of and work to include accessibility renovations with the business case pitch to the federal government, since the feds now provides funding to make this possible for cities and non-profits to acquire old apartment buildings.
- How will you work to improve accessible transportation including conventional transit, Paratransit, taxis and ride sharing? London in general has a tremendously outdated transit system. Implementation of AI scheduling, tied in with phone apps and phone call booking will make it easier for Londoners with accessibility needs to be served. I want to implement the use of on-demand mini-buses amongst the LTC fleet with a setup of virtual bus stops. This would support Londoners in residential areas far from main transit corridors. This would support Londoners who are not wheelchair bound and those who use wheelchairs, as they would be electric fleets with low floors. We would still need to look at taxi van partnerships, but the system would need to be more versatile via a booking app to allow multiple passengers per a trip to save costs and avoid devaluing this service to Londoners in need. Both the on-demand mini buses and taxi van fleet partnership would get us closer to treating this demographic of Londoners with more dignity and more options to live more fruitful and more independent lives.
Candidate did not respond to our questions.
1. Housing and connectivity, together. London doesn’t have enough accessible units, and even where the connections exist, they don’t go where people actually need to go. Earls Court Village is a clear example: there’s a sidewalk connection from the residence to the nearest bus stop, but no connection to the plaza nearby where residents actually want to go. The City’s own New Sidewalk List has several Ward 3 streets scheduled 6 to 10 years out or longer for connections residents need today. Accessibility planning needs to start from where people are actually trying to go.
2. I’d incentivize accessible housing through standards attached to money the City already puts on the table, not new red tape. London runs a per-unit grant for housing along transit corridors and a fit-out grant for converting vacant commercial space into housing, and right now neither rewards accessible or adaptable design. I’d attach a higher grant tier for units built fully accessible or adaptable, and extend the fast-tracked permitting I want for housing generally to accessibility retrofits specifically, ramps, wider doorways, accessible bathrooms, elevators added to low-rise conversions, so those projects don’t wait in the same queue as everything else.
3. London’s bidding process rewards the lowest compliant price across the board, security contracts, parking, road work, Paratransit, and London firms regularly lose out to Toronto or American companies as a result. Voyago losing this contract to a Toronto company is one example of a pattern I want fixed citywide: a bidding system that weighs local businesses instead of handing every contract to whoever clears the bar cheapest. In Paratransit’s case specifically, that same lowest-bidder logic gets you drivers paid around $21 an hour against $36 for conventional London Transit drivers, even with the union now in place, and that gap drives constant turnover: new drivers who don’t know the routes, don’t know the customers, and take longer to diagnose a vehicle problem on the road. The fleet needs funding too, vehicles and lifts are run down and breaking down, and the new booking algorithm that cut phone wait times has pushed actual trip times the other way, a ride that used to take 30 minutes can now take 90 minutes to two hours.
Drivers need consistent training, including on accepting service animals without pushback, and nobody should be standing outside alone at night waiting on a ride that may not show, that needs investment in late service. For trips Paratransit can’t cover at all, outside its boundary or when it can’t fit someone in, a mayoral debate this campaign is three kilometres outside the Paratransit boundary, I’d look at City-funded wheelchair van vouchers instead of leaving riders with no option. Whatever changes, someone at the City needs to be accountable for these numbers, and this is one piece of a bigger fix: London should be weighing local businesses in its bidding, not just handing contracts, security, parking, roads, Paratransit, to whoever clears the bar cheapest.
